Snide remark on check has bar patrons fuming

Friday night the story was on local TV. Sunday it was on "Good Morning America." By Sunday night it had inspired thousands of ticked-off tweets from around the world.

Alex Breitler

Friday night the story was on local TV. Sunday it was on "Good Morning America." By Sunday night it had inspired thousands of ticked-off tweets from around the world.

A Stockton bartender had referred to three of his customers as "Fat Girls" on a bill which perhaps he thought they'd never see.

They did. And they told.

After the first news report, waves of outrage rolled in via social media:

"Wow, this is just rude..."

"This is disgraceful ... "

"Unbelievable!"

It happened Thursday night at Chilly D's Sports Lounge, at the Cameo Club Casino on Benjamin Holt Drive.

Three Stockton women ate dinner and drank sodas there, and when they got the bill, they discovered the unflattering description that the bartender had typed into the computer before the bill was printed - apparently reminding the server that the bill should go to the "Fat Girls."

Cameo Club owner Maggie Lewis, 62, said she was as disgusted as everyone else. The bartender was fired that night, she said.

"I'm overweight myself," Lewis said Sunday night, standing outside the front door of the casino, where an apology had been posted for all to read.

"We've always been a friendly, people-oriented business," Lewis said. "This is just crazy."

Lewis said she interviewed the bartender before hiring him three weeks ago. He seemed nice, and he was experienced, she said.

But for some reason, on that busy Thursday night, the bartender added the description of the women even though the tables in the lounge are numbered to keep orders straight, Lewis said.

A server then delivered the bill apparently without noticing the reference.

The women complained and management waived the cost of the meal. Through social media Lewis invited the women to return for an in-person apology.

In the meantime, Lewis waits to find out what impact of all this publicity might have on her business, which opened in the late 1970s, moving in 2007 from Pacific Avenue to its current location at the former Naughty Nick's pizza restaurant.

The phone in the sports lounge rang all day Sunday as people called to complain. Business has been a little slow since the news broke, lead bartender Brian Wong said; two small groups watched "Sunday Night Football" in the lounge, although the adjacent cardroom was crowded.

Wong said Sunday that he barely knew the offender. "I can't imagine why he would do what he did. It was insane," he said.

Bartenders sometimes make notations like "group of 3" to keep track of the business, but should not use physical descriptions, Wong said.

It's possible that the fired bartender had previously worked in an establishment where the paper bill is not delivered to the customer, he said.

Watching football with two buddies, 29-year-old Brandon Leffler thought the worldwide reaction a bit overblown.

"This is a bigger deal than Stockton being the world capital in homicides?" he said, without even knowing that the city's 69th killing of the year had taken place perhaps an hour earlier. "I don't think one little blunder on a receipt should tank a whole business."

But in an interview with News 10, the women - identified as Christine Duran, Christina Huerta and Isabel Robles - said Lewis' offered apology would not undo the damage.

"They can't change it," Robles told the television station. "This is something that we got to live with - all three of us."